Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

If you look close at the building behind the Flatiron you can see a billboard (on the roof) for Pach Brothers Studio. I took portrait classes from the last owner of Pach Brothers, Oscar White. When he closed the studio it was the oldest operating studio in North America. He had an amazing archive of famous clients' images. President Ulysses S. Grant was involved in getting the studio started.

I used a nearly identical photo to show the path of Harold Lloyd's taxi up 5th Avenue, crossing Broadway in front of the prow of the Fuller Building, during his final silent comedy, "Speedy," filmed on location in New York during the summer of 1927.

You can see some of the 50 New York locations where Lloyd filmed by checking out my blog. I am presenting Speedy at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria-Queens on Sunday, October 16.

Some of the signs visible in this photo announce the shops of well-known New York dealers in luxury goods. The 900 block of Broadway, just behind and left of the Flatiron Building, includes the perfume manufactory of Richard Hudnut at 925, and the showrooms of carpet importers Van Gaasbeek & Arkell Oriental Rugs on the corner at 935. Here's Hudnut's 1909 perfume catalog cover and Van Gaasbeek's long-running print ad.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.